There is a bet going around in the NFL Network studios. It’s a pretty typical one this time of year, when the Pro Football Hall of Fame welcomes its newest inductees into its hallowed halls and tough, rugged football players step up to a podium and bare their souls as they describe their path to the highest plateau of their profession.

Invariably, emotions take over as they recall and recount their stops along the way. The support they received from family and friends and coaches and teammates. The obstacles they faced and overcame. The triumphs and pitfalls and peaks and valleys.

And for many, the tears follow soon after. The harder the fight to prevent them, the more the tears fall.

It’s a given.

Which brings us back to the bet going around the NFL Network studios in Culver City as the big day approaches.

LaDainian Tomlinson, Morten Andersen, Terrell Davis, Kenny Easley, Jerry Jones, Jason Taylor and Kurt Warner will all take their turn at the podium. The question — and bet — is who will shed some tears first.

“I heard (Deion Sanders) is putting his money on me,” said Tomlinson, laughing. “He thinks I’m gonna walk up to the mike and just start crying. And that might happen, I tell you. When I get up there and look into the crowd and see my mother and my wife and so many people who had an influence on me, I’m sure I’ll get emotional.”

It should be noted Tomlinson doesn’t appear to be in any hurry to take Sanders up on the bet, either. It’s a pretty good sign the humbling road he took to pro football stardom and enshrinement into the Hall of Fame will get the best of him.

“I’m an emotional person to begin with,” he conceded. “I don’t know what it’ll be like when I put that jacket on and see all the people who helped me in this journey.”

Many of whom are making the trip from Texas, where Tomlinson grew up in Rosebud, was a high school star in Waco and then became a record-breaking running back at Texas Christian University in Forth Worth.

“It feels great,” Tomlinson told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Canton. “A lot of those people, they raised me. Those are the people that I first started playing football in those towns. I learned how to be the person that I am today. So many influences from that area.

“Even when I think about my Pop Warner coaches, I remember when we first started practicing our coach used to make us do this abs exercise where you lay on the ground on your back and you raise your feet about six inches. We would hold our legs up, it seemed for hours, and he’d just walk around yelling, ‘Popcorn. Soda water. Lemonade.’ All the things that we had been drinking as kids the whole summer.

“So I was a 6- or 7-year-old kid, but I remember it like it was yesterday. So those people are very much part of the fabric of who I am today. So I’m so proud that I am here to share this moment with them.”

It was with the San Diego Chargers that Tomlinson truly burst onto the national scene, becoming one of the faces of the franchise during a career in which he rushed for 13,684 yards and 145 touchdowns while also catching 624 passes for 4,772 yards and 17 touchdowns.

And by the end of which, was recognized as one of the most versatile running backs in the history of the National Football League.

“You talk about complete backs, and that was what he was,” Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers said. “In an era where you’re talking about situational backs or two-down or third-down guys, L.T. was a guy who stayed on the field, a guy you could hand it off to or throw to.”

Pulled in different directions

Saturday will be emotional for other reasons, of course.

Tomlinson is one of the icons of a Chargers franchise that spent the last 56 years in San Diego, but relocated in January to Los Angeles. And while Tomlinson will always be associated with the San Diego years as a player, he recently took a job as an advisor to Chargers owner Dean Spanos and is looking forward to the team’s new future in the L.A. area.

Recognizing the former with the present is a bit of a challenge.

“I’m going in as a San Diego Charger because that’s who I played for,” Tomlinson told the Associated Press. “And I recognize that you cannot erase the history of 56 years in San Diego. However, I do realize that I now work for Dean Spanos and the L.A. Chargers, and so there’s no conflict there. I know who I played for, but now in my retirement I now work for the L.A. Chargers, who, in my mind they’re the Chargers.

“To me it’s always been about the lightning bolt. And that’s my thought about conflict and what not.”

He doesn’t take it lightly.

“It’s been a lot of, I won’t say sleepless nights, but tossing and turning sometimes at night wondering if I’m making the right decision,” Tomlinson said. “But at the end of the day, I love both. I have the bolt tattoo on my calf, there’s no secret about that. There’s a part of me that always will be. But the same goes with the community. I came were as a 21-year-old kid and I left a 30-year-old man. So I learned how to be a man in this community. So I’m kind of torn. I can’t have one without the other. The Chargers were here for 56 years and it’s hard to just get over that.

“I completely understand how people are feeling. My hope is that one day they can start to forgive. People want me to choose a side, but that’s not who I am at the core of my soul and spirit. I can’t chose either side. I want to be on both sides. But I understand how people are feeling right now. My hope is they can forgive me because I feel like I’m doing something right.”

Vincent Bonsignore is an NFL columnist for the Southern California News Group. Having covered the Los Angeles sports scene for more than two decades, Bonsignore has emerged as one of the leading voices on the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers, the NFL and NFL relocation.